


Siman tov u’mazal tov

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Judaism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 17:27:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14815688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: “I didn’t get to have a big wedding,” his mother had told him when they’d finally spoken about it. “I was pregnant and it was a lot and your dad and I just got married. It’s my time. I’m having a big wedding.” She sounded nervous, almost defensive, as though a woman who is nearly sixty doesn’t have a right to want a big wedding. She wasn’t no young blushing bride. She has a thirty-year-old son for god’s sake.But his mom was going to have a big wedding.And Ben had taken a deep breath before saying what he’s sure Leia was even more nervous about hearing.“I’m not sure I’m coming.”





	Siman tov u’mazal tov

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to aionimica for looking this over!

“I didn’t get to have a big wedding,” his mother had told him when they’d finally spoken about it. “I was pregnant and it was a lot and your dad and I just got married. It’s my time. I’m having a big wedding.” She sounded nervous, almost defensive, as though a woman who is nearly sixty doesn’t have a right to want a big wedding. She wasn’t a young blushing bride. She has a thirty-year-old son for god’s sake.

But his mom was going to have a big wedding.

And Ben had taken a deep breath before saying what he’s sure Leia was even more nervous about hearing.

“I’m not sure I’m coming.”

 

-

 

They are trying honesty.

Honesty, honesty, brutal honesty, they had decided, was the only way they can be sure that they’re moving forward. Even if it means risking moving backward.

His mother hadn’t called him for a month after he’d said that. Ben couldn’t even be mad about it. He’d be pissed too, if he were her. But he’d also told her the truth.

He’s not sure if he’s coming.

 

-

 

To be fair, he hadn’t been sure that he _not_ coming either. Which he had told her when he had, eventually, called her again (around Rosh Hashannah to tell her that he definitely wasn’t going to High Holy Day services and she shouldn’t spend money on a ticket for him, because even if they aren't talking he knows she’d get him one).

She had exhaled slowly into the phone when he’d said that.

“I meant it. I’m just not sure.”

“You _like_ Amilyn,” his mother had needled.

“That’s not it,” Ben said.

“What is it, then? God knows you had a difficult relationship with your father—it’s not out of some weird patriarchal possessiveness, is it?”

Ben had swallowed. “I don’t know,” he had said. “That’s why I might come.”

His mother had made a noise into the phone. “You continue to be impossible,” she had told him.

He did not deny it.

 

-

 

“Ben, it’s starting to be close,” his mother had said a month before the wedding. “And I really need to know for seating arrangements.”

“If I’m not there, say the chair is for Elijah.”

“I’m more concerned about the caterers.”

“Someone will bail last minute. Someone always does. I’ll take their food.”

“And if no one bails last minute?”

“I’ll GrubHub something kosher into the shul.”

“You will do no such thing.”

 

-  
-

 

The day of the wedding dawns and Ben still can’t decide if he’s going. He sits in his living room, smoking a cigarette that he knows would annoy his mother and stares at his own hands.

His dad would probably crack some joke about how his mom was obviously going to leave him for Amilyn. _She’s a kohein,_ his father had joked more than once. _I’m just a Solokowski._ Solokowski, which Ellis Island had turned into Solo. Han Solo, and his son Ben. Not Benjamin Bibi Benyamin. Just Ben. Son Solo. Son _of_ Solo.

_But if she ever does, kid, you make sure that she’s properly taken care of. Because like hell is she ever gonna let me do it if she leaves me for Amilyn._

He stabs the cigarette out in an ashtray and pulls out his phone. He texts his mom.

_I’m coming._

Then he goes to dig through his closet for the one nice suit he has and figure out if he can make his iron work because if he’s going to be at his mother’s wedding, he’d better look sharp.

_Photos are at 1 and you’re walking me down the aisle even if you’re not in the program._

_Yes ma’am._

_You are impossible._

_I will probably continue to be all day, so don’t get your hopes up that I’ve changed._

_I wouldn’t dream of it._ And then a few seconds later. _I’m glad you’re coming._

 

_-_

 

Ben wears a blue tie, correctly guessing that his mother’s favorite color would come into play in the wedding. His mother’s bouquet is full of Forget-me-nots and she has them woven into the thick braid wrapped around her hair.

“You look like an classy old lesbian who’s marrying a hippy,” he tells her when he greets her. Because they’re doing honesty, and it’s the truth.

“Good,” his mother replies without pause. “And you look like my deadbeat son. When did you last shave? And you could do with a haircut.”

“My hair looks fine.”

“It’s overgrown.”

“I’ll go out back and shave it all off, then. Do I have time before pictures?”

“Stop it,” his mother says, rolling her eyes. She then reaches up a hand and cups his cheek, running her thumb along the scar. She does not know this, but his father had done the same right before he had died. Ben’s face had still been bleeding on his hand.

“You _can_ go shave in the bathroom though before pictures.”

“I don’t have a razor.”

“I do,” comes a voice. The voice belongs to a woman—younger than Ben, and British from the sound of her voice. And goyische, from the way she’s standing. Ben doesn’t know why, but goyim always stand a certain way in shul. Like they’re afraid. Like they are suddenly vividly realizing that just because the Tanakh is part of their Bible, they have no fucking clue how the fuck Jews actually interpret it and that shared Judeo-Christian tradition is a myth. “Though it’s for legs more than faces.”

“He’ll take it,” his mother says and the woman disappears, coming back with a blue razor and an unused Venus razor head. She hands both to him, which is how Ben finds himself shaving off his mustache, goatee, and scruff in the men’s room fifteen minutes before taking pictures with his mother for her second wedding.

When he emerges, he has no idea where the British shiksa had ended up, so he tucks her razor into his breast pocket for safe-keeping.

 

-

 

A lot of the people here are _young_. Younger than his mother for sure, and some of them even younger than Ben. But that makes sense. His mother’s always been able to build community.

The last time that Ben was in this shul had been before he’d gone to college and done his damndest to drop Judaism from his life completely. He doesn’t recognize most of the people who are here.

But why would he?

He hasn’t spent time with his mother in ten years. Longer, if he counts college, which Ben figures why not if he’s gonna do the Jewish guilt thing.

 

-

 

He towers over his mother as he walks her down the aisle. Everyone’s staring at him. He sees a few people hiss _who’s that?_ to their neighbors while checking the program for a sign of him.

_That’s her son._

_That’s_ Ben.

 

-

 

Ben goes outside to smoke during the seclusion period, where his mother and Amilyn are in the Bride Room. Amilyn has dyed her hair a nice sky blue for the wedding to go with the flowers.

Good thing they’re both too old to have kids, or else Ben would end up with a half-sister with mermaid hair. Also he’d be old enough to be her dad.

It’s misting lightly outside, and the weather reports had threatened rain. Ben just smokes.

The door to the shul opens and the British girl pops her head out.

“Thanks for your razor,” Ben says, digging it out of his breast pocket and handing it to her.

“Of course,” she says. She doesn’t say anything else, as she comes outside to stand with him.

“You don’t have to play nice with me.” He exhales out of his nose. _You look like the devil when you do that,_ his mother had complained when he’d been twenty and had just started smoking. She hadn’t wanted him to smoke, but couldn’t very well condemn him for something that she herself had fallen back to doing while he was in high school. _Good thing the devil isn’t a Jewish concept, so I’m safe._

“I’m not—” The girl begins.

“Want a cigarette?” Ben asks her, reaching for the box in his pocket.

“No thank you. I don’t smoke.”

“Then why are you out here and not in there?”

“I could ask the same of you,” the girl says.

“I’m avoiding the immediate consequences of a strained relationship with my mother at a social event where everyone loves her and is thus intensely curious about me. You don’t have the same excuse.”

The girl licks her lips and crosses her arms over her chest, looking out over the lawn in front of the shul.

“Do you ever feel very alone even though you’re surrounded by people who love you and care about you?” she asks him.

“I’ve never had the experience of being surrounded by people who love and care about me, so no.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “There’s no need to be an edgelord.”

“A whatnow?”

“An edgelord.”

“I don’t know what that is. Humor an old man and explain.”

“You’re not an old man.”

“I’m older than you.” She gives him a look, and his adds “you know what, I can figure it out from context.”  He chucks the butt of his cigarette on the ground and pulls another one out of the box along with his lighter. He lights it, drags, breathes, flares his nostrils, and says at last, “Yeah. I’ve had something similar. Where you know you should feel more loved because of the people around you, but you end up feeling worse about yourself.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Anyway. It’s dumb. But I’m feeling lonely and if I try talking to people, I end up wanting to cry.”

“So you came out here to walk it out and stumbled on an asshole.”

“I suppose.” She pauses. She’s got hazel eyes, and freckles that go with that accent of hers. “I’m Rey, by the way.”

“Ben.”

“I know.”

They stand in silence for another few minutes while Ben finishes his cigarette. Then he holds open the door for her as they head inside. She’s wearing a grey dress that swishes when she walks, and Ben wonders just how young she is.

 

-

 

He can’t tell if his mother frummed the fuck out or if he’d just gotten desensitized to it all during the years he’d spent on his own. If he’d had to imagine a Leia Organa wedding, it wouldn’t entail hundreds of people singing and dancing in circles around her, lifting her up in the air on a chair while a band plays. He doubts very much that it’s _Amilyn_ who is responsible for this. Amilyn had always preferred smoking up to going to shul—something that Ben had always eminently respected in her.

But there are at least three or four circles of people swirling and singing and clapping and dancing and laughing with his mother and Ben—

Ben remembers niggunim out of the blue all the dang time. It’s really fucking annoying, actually. And it’s _worse_ when it’s High Holy Day liturgy (what is it about Avinu Malkeinu that gets stuck in his head constantly? He doesn’t answer that question, because he’s pretty damn sure the answer would involve holding his father’s lifeless corpse and the words “my fault”). But he doesn’t recognize these songs at all. But everyone swirling and dancing are all singing as though every Jew was born with these melodies and words in their head.

Ben stands to the back of the room, arms crossed over his chest as he watches in detached awe. Everyone looks so happy. He can’t remember the last time his mother looked this happy. The Rabbi who had married them had said something about how it was a mitzvah to dance before the bride on her wedding day, to make her smile and laugh. His mom’s guests are doing that mitzvah, he supposes.

For about two minutes, he gets marginally excited because he _does_ recognize that niggun from kabbalat Shabbat, but the words are not the ones he’d sung to L’Cha Dodi with his parents. Then they’re on to another song.

 _When_ had his mother gotten the stamina for all this, he wonders?

She’d smoked like a chimney for years, you can hear it in her voice when she speaks. But there she is, dancing in the middle with that girl who’d lent him the razor and some other people who are most definitely goyim because he’d be _very_ surprised if his mother had expanded her horizons to Ethiopian and Sephardic Jewry. Weirder things could have happened, but he’s got an instinct on this one.

He remembers what Rey had said outside while he’d been smoking. How sometimes she feels more alone when surrounded by people.

Acutely, Ben feels that. Acutely, he is aware of how alone he is—that the only person in this room who knows him is his mother (and Amilyn, he supposes). Rey had talked about being surrounded by people who loved her, but Ben…Ben’s only ever had the one person, really. And right now, he doesn’t even have her.

“Come dance.”

Rey is standing in front of him, her eyes are bright, her cheeks are flushed and her hands are on her hips.

“I’ve got a smoker’s lungs. Do you want me to drop dead?”

“No, I want your mother to see you dancing at her wedding.”

“I came. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, it’s not.”

Rey holds out her hand, and he can tell she’s the type of person who doesn’t take no for an answer. He can tell this because she reminds him, in that moment, of his mother, even if her hair isn’t braided and she’s definitely not Jewish.

He takes her hand and it sends a shock down his spine that he can see she felt too because of the way her eyes widen at him.

A moment later, she’s dragging him towards the circles, and nope, he still doesn’t know this fucking tune at all, but he also knows he has to make noise and he can yai nai nai his way through the melody and that’ll do.

Rey’s hand is tight in his and somehow he finds the two of them three circles in at the speed of light. She’s tugging him through, and a moment later someone else is grabbing his other hand and everyone’s moving very fast, and singing very loudly, and hundreds of bodies are moving and crushing against one another as the circles move a little too closely together because people in the outer circles are trying to get a better view of the brides. His mother is dancing in the middle with a blonde he doesn’t know and his heart lurches because that’s his mom; she should be dancing with him right now.

He turns his eyes to Rey.

She’s doing the same thing as him, yai nai nai-ing her way along with the melody of the song like a champ. She beams up at him and her eyes are so damn pretty, and her lips are cute and pink and she’s tall for most guys, probably, but she’d tuck right under his chin if they danced later on to something slower.

The band transitions the song and Ben’s ready to trip his way over a new melody when his eyes go wide because he doesn’t know the niggun, but he _does_ know _siman tov u’mazal tov_ because there are like four words to the song and he’d heard them at every bar mitzvah he’d ever been to. He starts singing loudly, more out of surprise than anything else and that’s when he feels hands on his forearms, tugging him forward through the circle because his mother had heard him singing and she’s pulling him to the center to dance with her.

He keeps singing as she takes both of her hands in his, and he even tries the dumb twirl he’d seen his dad pull on her once or twice which breaks her face into a big smile and yeah, honesty’s working for them, and progress is hard, and the past fucking hurts him so much he wants to burn it all to the ground sometimes, but sometimes you just want to dance with your mom on her wedding day.

People are clapping and singing and a moment later Amilyn appears at their shoulders and Leia releases one of Ben’s hands and grabs hers and Amilyn grabs the one his mother had just freed and the three of them swirl around the center of the circle until Ben’s smoker’s lungs catch up with him and he starts to have trouble breathing.

“How are _you_ holding it together?” he wheezes at his mother.

“Sheer force of will,” his mother calls over the music.

“That’s not how that works.”

She shrugs.

If it was going to work that way for anyone, it was going to be for Leia Organa.

 

-

 

When the emcee invites people up to the dance floor to dance alongside Leia and Amilyn halfway through their first dance as a married couple, Ben takes a deep breath. He is not seated at the same table as Rey. She’s off towards the back of the hall, conveniently close to where he knows the dessert buffet is going to be, and she seems to have transitioned out of her loneliness from the way she’s cheerfully chatting with her friends and watching Leia and Amilyn with a look of adoration on her face.

As if she had sensed his gaze, her eyes drift to him and she gives him a tentative smile.

Ben gets to his feet.

So does she.

They make their way quickly through the tables until they’re standing right next to one another. Then, Ben clears his throat.

“Do you want to dance?” he asks her. _Do you like me or is this all just bullshit?_ he doesn’t say.

“I’d love to,” and she takes his hand again and leads him to the dance floor.

He pulls her into his arms.

He’d been right: she tucks right under his chin.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! If you want to talk about Jewish Skywalkers and Solos, come find me on [tumblr](http://crossingwinter.tumblr.com/reylo)!


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